‘Survivor 50’: How Christian Hubicki Will ‘Steal’ Mike White’s ‘Power’ With ‘Narrative Warfare’

Christian Hubicki was an early favorite in Survivor: David vs. Goliath. Now, he’s back for the first time in Survivor 50, and he has his former castmates, Mike White and Angelina Keeley, with him.

The robotics professor has no ill will towards The White Lotus creator and their David vs. Goliath costar (White gave both of them cameos in the Emmy-winning HBO drama), but he doesn’t “believe in being stupid” in this game, he told TV Insider on set in Fiji in June 2025.

Here, Hubicki reveals how he will use White’s strategy against him in the landmark season, the people he wants to work with the most, and how his infant son — who was just six weeks old when Season 50 started filming — is his new driving force in the competition.

“You don’t have to accept seventh place, son,” he says. Below, find out how the robotics professor plans to end this game in first.

In your David vs. Goliath elimination confessional, you said you felt like you earned the respect of your colleagues and wondered if you should respect yourself more as a consequence. Did you? How have you changed as a player since?

Christian Hubicki: Things absolutely changed after that. It was an opportunity to put me with people I would never otherwise be with. That was always my concern: that when I went out on Survivor, these are not the people I see every day. My life was limited to about six people in a lab, maybe 10, and my girlfriend. That was my world. How would I work outside of that world? Of all the spaces of possibilities that came my way in that season, it collapsed them down to a very affirming one, which is, I am capable of making headway with people that I’ve never met before. And that it’s a skill that I have and one that I need to accept instead of deny and deflect, and try to be humble about. Because if I don’t, I misuse it.

What did I do on David vs. Goliath? I was concerned that people wouldn’t like me, so I carpet bombed them with charm … That carpet bombing put such a massive target on me, and the cat’s out of the bag, but I think that there’s opportunity to be more surgical this time. I don’t need to flex that muscle in front of everyone and use it thoughtfully in a way that gets me further.

Do you think you’re a Goliath now?

[Laughs] I don’t know if I’m a Goliath. It depends on what you mean by that. That’s a challenging framing. But I think by Jeff [Probst’s] framing, I think I would say yes, I am a person who has accepted his strengths, and I have to use them on a daily basis. I’m now a professor … I also started my own research lab where I am in charge. My students are my employees. They work for me. If I don’t bring in grant funding, they don’t get a paycheck, and they can’t look to me and see a person in doubt. They need to look to someone who leads, someone who does have the ability to say, we will be fine. I will find funding. I will go to this sponsor, and I will convince them that what you’re going to do is worthwhile.

That gives me much more confidence to lead not only in life, but also in how I want to shape this game. I cannot let my strengths be too quiet in this game. I need to leverage them in a thoughtful way, otherwise people will leverage their own strengths against me.

This is the first time that the old era and the new era are being pitted against each other. Tell me why someone from your era is most likely to win?

Ooh, why is someone from the old era, the olden days — I feel crotchety just saying that — going to win? I mean, I sure hope that it is me, and therefore the answer is yes. But I’ll be honest, these new era folks, they have an advantage, a big one, in that the fact that they played very recently, they understand this format, they know each other, they go to these events together. They already have familiarity with each other, whereas the rest of us are spread across 40 seasons. So, on paper, [it’s a] disadvantage, but one of the beauties of Survivor is that every advantage can be disadvantaged and vice versa. If people look at these new era folks and say, we cannot allow them to run to the table, we cannot allow the oldsters, us oldsters — I will include myself amongst this group — to be picked off like they were in Winners at War, I’m sure some of these classic era folk are terrified of being picked off by these new schoolers. That’s a galvanizing force. In a weird way, I’m in the middle. I’m at the tail end of the old era, so maybe I can just see which way the wind blows.

What advantages do you think the David vs. Goliath cast specifically has?

Our cast has the advantage of seeing elements of both games. We didn’t have as many twists as were going on in this newfangled era. We had several, but we also had the long game experience of just downtime that someone like Colby Donaldson, I’m sure, had to endure. He was there for 42 days [in Season 2, The Australian Outback], that guy. And so there is something to bond over there in both ways, but the middle can be an advantage, or it can be dangerous in any game of Survivor. The key difference is that if you are wishy-washy and in the middle, you get Rob Cesternino-ed, you get knocked out of there. You get Christy Smith-ed. But if you’re smart and in the middle, many people have been over the years, then that can work to your advantage.

Other than people from your own season, who intrigues you the most and why?

Oh, a lot of people intrigue me. Rick Devens is a really good potential partner in this game. I can see it. He would be my Captain Kirk, man of action to my Mr. Spock. I would be calculating torpedo trajectories, and he would be pulling off Kobayashi Maru at tribal council. I hope we connect. I think he would be open to that. That makes a lot of sense. I think Emily Flippen is someone who I would get along quite well with. It’s hard not to see some parallels to Gabby [Pascuzzi from David vs. Goliath], but she’s a different person than Gabby. No one can be Gabby, nor should anyone other than Gabby be Gabby.

I’m intrigued by what some of these classic era people bring to the table. Cirie [Fields] is certainly a force to be reckoned with. The fact that she’s on the map, I’m sure people see that as a target. It’s also a dangerous opportunity. She and I have similar problems on extremely different scales. I was not allowed anywhere near that final three for fear people would vote for me to win. Cirie has that, times some large number. There is opportunity in saying it is the most dangerous thing alive to wedge yourself to Cirie and trust her. But if the opportunity arises, I might be able to offer her the one thing she wants more than anything, which is to sit in that final tribal council. We’ll see.

She is a very sharp player, but she’s a loyal one, too.

I think so. Am I her type, and does she trust someone like me? I don’t know. She was on all number of shows, and not a ton of people read like me, let’s just say, jittering at some absurd frequency in their chairs. The closest might be someone like Cory Wurtenberger, back when she was on Big Brother. I am not sure how well they meshed together. I’m not sure if she will see a Cory [in me] or if she’ll see someone that she would work maybe more closely with. She’s sharp enough, though, to make the choice that she thinks is best for her. My hope is that she would underestimate me, though. That is my only hope in that scenario.

Thinking about the events that led to your David vs. Goliath elimination, what was your biggest mistake, and how will you avoid repeating it?

My biggest tactical mistake was trusting Mike White. That’s number one. I did not know the degree to which he wanted me out of the game over and over and over again. Tactically, that was an error. As a result, I shared information with him that I should not have shared. I should have trusted Davie [Rickenbacker] more. Davie was my ticket to the end tactically. But those are the minutiae. Those are the maneuvers on the battlefield. The greater issue is, I was unaware of how I’d be perceived on that island, and that led to my particular threat profile.

It is still the case that I am ambiently a character. We are at Ponderosa together, and I am trying to be normal, or what humans would normally call normal. And it is hard for me. We select these tables to sit down at Ponderosa, and I’m like, oh, there’s a table that’s next to Colby’s. I’ll go sit at that table, and we’ll watch the sunset separately, but maybe Colby will find me to be some kind of very thoughtful sunset-watching man, as we are called in the business. I go to open my bottle of juice, and I managed to fumble this and then break the bottle without actually opening it. And so I just slide this aside and pretend it never happened and hope he never saw, but the man probably thinks I’m a space alien. I realized that is just me. So how do I use that? Some part of that is to lean into that, “I thought Christian was some kind of super genius. Turns out he’s just a weird professor man,” and there are bigger threats out there. You’ve got Genevieve [Mushaluk] out here. You have Kyle [Fraser], who won out here. I’ll really try to repaint what the threats truly are on this island.

Mike White’s here. What’s the plan now?

Mike White is here. I cannot believe he’s here. It’s not a complete surprise. I know the guy loves this show. He had a very unorthodox audition tape. He just won an Emmy [for The White Lotus] and decided to just name-drop Survivor in his acceptance speech. That’s one way to get back on the show. I should have thought of that. That would’ve been a great way to get back. Have the No. 1 streaming show in the world for some period of time. That’s it. Why didn’t I think of this? God.

The man is extremely talented at the game of Survivor. There’s a reason I, in some degree, am going to model my returning game after him, obviously by making a hit TV show. But the man has a way of controlling a narrative. What I realized, amidst all the charts and graphs and number breakdowns and relationships and voting blocks that happen on the show, which I thought were the key elements of the game, those are truly important parts of the game, but it’s an incomplete picture of Survivor.

I realized after watching him play that Survivor‘s narrative warfare. It’s a fight for the best story, the story that controls people the most, the one that controls how they vote before they get to the final tribal, and how they vote when they get there. That tells you how they want to work with, who they want to work with. What story are they telling themselves that makes them the hero and your enemies the villain? Being able to tell people the right story in a credible way is the way that I will steal his power and have control.

Mike White and I are cool. He did put me on The White Lotus with my wife, which was very nice of him. We had this beautiful little cameo in the background. It was perfect. Do I want revenge for getting him out? Absolutely not. I don’t believe in revenge, but I don’t believe in being stupid either. Do I trust him 100%? Absolutely not. Would I work with him? Depends on the situation.

How does Angelina Keeley fit into that?

Angelina is a similar bag. Both Mike and Angelina tried to get me out four times each. And I think Angelina thinks I’m cool with her. On a personal level, absolutely. I hold no animosity about the game. I’ve never said a cross word about Angelina, but I also know that that woman is driven beyond belief to win this game, especially now. She’s a mother of two. She loves those kids. And she was driven before. She will stab people this time.

Do I think that our cordiality will spare me a fate? Absolutely not. I don’t believe in being stupid, but what she does not know, nor does Mike White know, nor does anyone know, is that I’m also a father. Six weeks ago, we had our baby boy.

Wow, six weeks old. Congratulations.

Thank you. It was tough having to leave him. He is a new motivation for me, though, out here, one that I don’t think people know I have. People will think, oh, this Christian, he’s nice. He hands me my bags when I get off the boat. He’s a nice guy. And it’s true. I’m a nice guy, but I need to be here for a reason. I have to set an example for him that you don’t have to limit yourself to what people allow you to have. You don’t have to accept seventh place, son. You can fight for what is yours in a way that is true to yourself and your values, and you can win, too. He’s my little secret weapon.

Are you going to keep him a secret?

I’m going to keep him a secret, at least as long as I can, as long as it feels right. That’s for me.

It must be very emotional for you to be here and not with him.

Yeah. I left him with recordings of me reading baby books to him and got him a robot baby bed to help rock him to sleep, so my wife gets a little bit more sleep. We have family coming to help her out, but it’s not the same as me being there with him. I can close my eyes, and I can still envision his face. The first time he took a bath, I was like, is he going to love the bath? Is he going to hate the bath? He’s going to cry in the bath. He got out, and he made this face. He was in wonderment of the sheer existence of that. He had a bath. I’ll just never forget what he looks like in that and other moments. So at least I have that with me, and it’s mine.

What pieces of your strategy from before are you keeping? And what are you doing away with?

I am going to keep my ability to, when I target a person, really connect with them, but I will do it almost exclusively in one-on-ones, not in groups. There were times when I wanted to be delightful, even in just the times that we were off-screen. There are times when we’re off camera, we’re in a tent, getting ready to go into the tribal council. I was thinking, I’ll be fun here because I don’t want people to think I’m just doing this for the cameras. I’m doing this because, hey, we’re all in this crazy experience together. I want to show you that I just genuinely care about you having fun. What people took away from that was, this guy’s an airtime threat. He must go. And I’m like, ah! So, one-on-ones are where I will try to charm-pocalypse people.

Additionally, I had some preconceived notions about the nature of chaos in the game, which I thought were very interesting but ultimately ill-fated when I played the first time, like the more chaos, the better. That’s not always the case. Sometimes, if I’m in the right group, it’s time to solidify.

It’s a little like sand [picks up a handful of sand from the beach]. Sand is interesting, composed of lots of little grains. Imagine that each of these is a person to crush. Sand is actually a granular material, which means that it could actually exhibit multiple properties. It can be like a solid where I’m crushing it, like I’m squishing a stress ball, something that’s solid or a rock. But in the right conditions, it flows. You spring a leak, now it plays like water. Fluid, changing. Or you can plug it back up again. If I can control when the game solidifies vs. when it flows to my benefit and embrace both order and chaos, I think that’s a way that I can win.

Survivor 50, Premieres Wednesday, February 25, 8/7c, CBS